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"Spam malware" in Chrome Browsing on Mac OS X 10.9.4

I'm having trouble with Browsers. I rotate between Safari, Aurora, and Chrome. i'm mixed between Aurora

and Chrome for which I prefer. But all three of them eventually choke of resources and hog the cpu. Sometimes

quitting the broswer helps but most of the time, I reboot of OS X is needed to clean up the resource logjam.


My practice of using a lot of windows and tabs is at least part of it. But if varys on different days.


Thist week began a new bothersome and worrisome behavior that has malware fingerprints. Sometimes when I click

on a link on a window that is "normal" size (say 60% height and 60% width of screen), a full screen pops up over everything

and something I didn't ask for shows up. There are several cases of what shows up.


1. Some times it is a window that advises me to clean up my Mac offering a tool to do that (I've seen this offer all the time

but I cannot recall which one it is but it is very common--I think the thing that was offered was Mac Keeper about which I have heard bad things so I

avoid it. It appears to have a foot hold on my system). clock the red close button on the window (or Cmd-W) and it disappears

and the window it came from reappears and is functional. I can no click the same link I had used before and now it works. Sometimes,

but not always, later windows as I navigate do the same thing.


2. Today, when I went to www.apple.com/support and clicked on discussions, a full scren window popped up with the URL:

http://rewardsclubonline.net/go/to/b19871/key/0ccb4465e35a33f39fbd3fa2996bb64d/a id/4562/s1/48125

or

http://www.wix.com/eteamhtml/900static?utm_campaign=ma_tlvmedia&experiment_id=TR_ 02C8EU4zz9PL38Q

or some other thing - I've only captured the two URLs.


If I close that popped up window, I"m bad on the apple discussion web page and things work OK.


This feels like my system is infested with something. Anyone have any ideas how thiat can be cleaned up?


Thanks,


Bruce

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), 27-inch Mid 2011 2.7 Ghz Intel Core

Posted on Aug 22, 2014 8:13 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Aug 22, 2014 8:26 AM

It's possible your browsers have been hijacked by some adware. You could download and run The Safe Mac's Adware Removal Tool to see if it finds/removes anything:

http://www.thesafemac.com/arg/

Worth reading the whole article before running it.

3 replies

Aug 22, 2014 10:47 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Thanks for your input. Since Safe Mac's Adware Removal tool has done a very good job of cleaning out the junk and

letting me run better, I'm happy for now.


However, I appreciate your judgement and I am working on evaluating Safari vs FireFox vs Chrome. I've had some trouble using FireFox with

LastPass which works very well under Chrome. But that is only one data point. Most of my Ram troub;e os related to the number of windows

and tabs I open. I've tried comparing the three browsers for how back each reacts.


I multiply windows and tabs because as I surf the web, I discover things I want and don't want to lose them. However, I need a tool more useful

and structured than bookmarks to be able to record things of interest to make them easy to return to and find later.

"Spam malware" in Chrome Browsing on Mac OS X 10.9.4

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